Friday, February 27, 2009

KayTar participated in the Special Olympics today! They have a young athletes division for kids ages 2-7 and her school district participates in it. When I told her that she was going to ride the bus today, she zoomed around the room dancing and chanting, "I get to ride the BUS! I get to ride the BUS!" Then she stopped, looked at me, and said, "Are you kidding me?" I assured her I wasn't kidding and she went back to her happy dance. Then I told her she was going to go to a very big gym, too, and that made her even more excited. Her first words this morning, while she was still in that twilight state was, "Ohhh, I get to go on the bus to the Big Gym!" It was a very exciting day for her.

She did the bean bag toss (and made all of her tosses, too).

She played a little soccer.

She hit a few baseballs.

She played with the big parachute.

Then she discovered her sport, basketball.

(this one is so blurry, but it was the only one where I caught her signature move, the single leg kick)

Then it was time for some racing.

She talked her aide into taking her back to the basketball hoops!

In this picture she is telling the station attendant that he is supposed to be guarding her.

So he did as requested.

And she scored!

All in all, it was a really wonderful experience for her and I'm sure she'll be talking about it for weeks to come!

Monday, February 23, 2009

Okay, so that's a lie. But she is ALMOST normal, at least developmentally speaking, according to our pediatrician at her well-child check today.

She got gold stars of mastery for:

* FINE MOTOR* COGNITIVE* SPEECH

She is still delayed in the gross motor arena, but we didn't expect to hear anything different. She was able to do all the tasks she was asked to do, except for standing on one foot without support. She can jump with two feet! She can walk up the stairs without holding on (using one of her legs, the stronger one) if I am behind her to ensure she doesn't rock back too far! She can stand and scoot forward in her skates using a shimmying motion! She's getting there. She still can't run, she still struggles to stand or walk on uneven ground most of the time. Her balance and muscle tone just aren't quite there yet, but she is steadily improving.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Likes: Flowers, princesses, fairies, hearts, butterflies...you know, sugar and spice and everything nice.Reading style: She likes to read to herself aloud. She can read nearly any word, but her attention span is more age appropriate. If a page has too many words, she has difficulty following the lines properly on her own (but that doesn't mean she wants help, she makes this clear)

6 year old boy:

Likes: Adventure, outer space, Star Wars, Legos, Magic Treehouse books...generally, snips and snails and puppy dog tails. Reading style: He loves to read chapter books to himself. He can read through a Magic Treehouse book in a few hours, which makes me think perhaps we need to bump the difficulty up a bit. He is an avid reader. Print that is small might be a deterrent, making it appear to be too difficult.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Yesterday morning I was feeling especially silly and decided to give all of KayTar's instructions in a mixture of monkey-speak and sign language (when she needed a bit more cuing). It went like this:

Me: (hand her her shoes) OOOO-OOO-aaa-aaa!

K: Mooooom, you NOT a monkey.

Me: OOOO-OOO-aaa-aaa-AAAA!

K: Mom, talk in your own voice!

Me: Ooooo-OOOO-aaaa!

K: Mom, are you just joking? (slightly concerned that I might actually be morphing into a monkey)

Me: (nodding and smiling) OOO-OOOO!

K: Ohhh! Okay.

Then she marched off to put her shoes on, just like I had requested. The rest of the getting ready routine was surprisingly easy to communicate using only monkey sounds and a touch of sign. Then she went back to tell me, "You NOT a monkey!" So I started switching up the animal sounds.

K: You NOT a monkey!

Me: Baaaa-baaa!

K: You NOT a sheep!

Me: [elephant trumpeting noise]

K: You NOT a elephant!

Me: Bark! Bark!

K: You NOT a dog! Penny is the dog!

Me: Meoooow.

K: You NOT a cat! Peanut is the cat!

Me: Neeeeigh!

K: You NOT a horse!

Me: Mooooooo!

K: You NOT a cow!

And so on and so forth until I ran out of animal noises and she asked me to go back to my own voice. I got a kick out of it, but I wasn't sure how much she enjoyed it. She giggled, but seemed to hold on to that underlying anxiety that I had some sort of underlying health condition that was turning me into an amorphous animal.

After school, I asked her, as always, "What was the best part of your day?" Usually she says, "Playing princesses in Ms. G's class (her inclusion class). This time she answered, "Making animal noises with you at home, Mom." and gave me a big hug.